Deposition of conductive materials using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques is an integral part of many semiconductor fabrication processes. These materials may be used for horizontal interconnects, vias between adjacent metal layers, contacts between first metal layers and devices on the silicon substrate, and high aspect ratio features. In a conventional tungsten deposition process, a substrate is heated to a predetermined process temperature in a deposition chamber, and a thin layer of tungsten-containing materials that serves as a seed or nucleation layer is deposited. Thereafter, the remainder of the tungsten-containing material (the bulk layer) is deposited on the nucleation layer. Conventionally, the tungsten-containing materials are formed by the reduction of tungsten hexafluoride (WF6) with hydrogen (H2). Tungsten-containing materials are deposited over an entire exposed surface area of the substrate including features and a field region.
Depositing tungsten-containing materials into small and, especially, high aspect ratio features may cause formation of seams and voids inside the filled features. Large seams may lead to high resistance, contamination, loss of filled materials, and otherwise degrade performance of integrated circuits. For example, a seam may extend close to the field region after filling process and then open during chemical-mechanical planarization.